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Debate, Debacle, Debt, Defaults and Doomsday
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by Gaurang Bhatt, MD |
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By now most informed Americans know that America is the world's largest debtor nation. The better informed ones know how idiotic are the statements of Cheney, O'Neill etc., that deficits don't matter as shown by Reagan. Republican tax cuts, galloping defense spending, initiated by Reagan and continued by both Bushes. They all have ballooned the deficits to half to one trillion dollars every year with no end in sight and continued increases. The new president will have to face the problem and curtail spending before US government debt is downgraded to junk. The Chinese, Japanese, South Koreans, Taiwanese and Russians have warned us already and are reducing their exposure to US debt and currency.
Obama admits that the Iraq War was a mistake but continues to fund it and wants to widen the war to Pakistan and Iran. McCain wants to widen it against Iran. While hardly anyone in the world rejoices at the covert attempt by Iran to obtain nuclear weapons, similar transgressions by Pakistan in the past, and Israel all along, are never discussed. By what authority is the US the sole decider who should have nuclear weapons, when it and the five permanent UN Security Council members are themselves in violation of the NPT for failure to abolish their own nuclear arsenals? There is no way to improve America's fiscal problems, economy, competitiveness or infrastructure without severely reducing military spending, entitlements and rationing Medicare and Medicaid and having a single payer non-profit health system.. The corrupt, foolish, stupid and lying Bush administration now wants to suspend the mark to market accounting rues devised by the FASB and gut Sarbanes Oxley to allow the corporate crooks to scam the public once again. They also want to convert goodwill (often imagined and of doubtful value in most cases) into a tangible asset for mandated capital asset ratio requirement for financial institutions. They and the Democrats have used these scams before in pension accounting by allowing false (nearly impossible) actuarial assumptions to permit severe under-funding of corporate employee pension plans which are dumped into the public lap of the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, after the executives have departed with obscenely rich golden parachutes and declared bankruptcy for the company (United Airlines, Bethlehem Steel etc.). |
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28-Sep-2008 | ||
More by : Gaurang Bhatt, MD | ||
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